On being married to an 80-year-old

 This past weekend, Hal turned 80. It was a milestone. The last milestone was the 50^th birthday, a sense that we were now in a new phase of life. Fifty was awesome. Eighty, breathtaking. This is higher ground indeed.

We’ve heard it said that growing older is gradual, passing through three stages: young old age (roughly from retirement to 80), middle old age (80-90), and really old old age (90 to whenever). The numbers vary with different experts on the subject. I’m not sure how helpful these categories are, other than to say we both felt rather smug about being in the young/old category.

Hal and I used to ask ourselves, “Are we old yet?” We asked it upon retirement, and then again on entering the retirement community. Now, as far as Hal goes, we don’t have to ask it anymore. He’s old. Clear and simple. (Actually, none of this is clear or simple.)

On the other hand, I’m still young, in my 70s. But I have entered a new category—that of being married to an 80-year-old. Will I have to make some changes? Do I treat him differently? Are we now an unbalanced couple? Will we topple if I don’t hold up my end?

(Let me interject here the fact that many of you have already passed the 80 milestone and are probably thinking, “Why is she making such a big deal of this? It’s nothing. No major change at all.” If you’re thinking that, I respect your perspective, but, please, just humor me. I’ll get there, too, in time.)

We celebrated, thanks largely to the efforts of our son. All of it surprised Hal. That always makes it fun. On Friday, David took us to the local small airport, where a friend was waiting to take us up for a ride in his little prop plane. For about 40 minutes we looked down on our town, the surrounding fields, the mountains, and the big river before descending back to the airport. Mid-trip, Jon, the pilot, turned the controls over to Hal who wasn’t quite sure he wanted them. I, in the back seat, was sure I didn’t want him to have them. But he eased into the task and had fun learning about the different gages to pay attention to as he turned the plan in different directions, lost and gained altitude, and really did fly the plane. It was a great birthday surprise! Something one doesn’t imagine an old man doing.

Saturday morning, we opened the door to our apartment to see it decorated with an elaborate birthday poster complete with Hal’s baby photos. Later our neighbors on the floor gathered to sing Happy Birthday and clap, hoot, and holler.

On Saturday noon we arrived at David’s home, expecting the usual family lunch and small celebration. But it turned out to be regular birthday party, with friends, family, balloons, songs, and a feast worthy of 80 years! We practiced all the time-honored rituals: a birthday apple pie (our tradition) with eight candles that Hal blew out. The Happy Birthday song, of course, and lots of photos. Now that I look back, we forgot to ask Hal to make a wish. We’ll have to do that part tonight. Different people shared memories of Hal, most of them funny. Then Hal told stories of his time in Guatemala; the night he was attacked by vampire bats was a favorite.

Saturday night Hal told me how affirmed he felt and how downright happy. A good celebration, worthy of a milestone.

Now it’s Monday morning and back to normal life. I find myself married to an 80-year-old man. But, of course, it doesn’t feel any different than the mornings that went before. He doesn’t seem radically changed. We’re still both growing older, slowly and not by leaps and milestones. I’m glad for gradual. We’re still enjoying this phase of life which has its joys as well as its challenges.

We’ve stopped asking, “Are we old yet,” because it seems like an irrelevant question. We’re alive and well. God is good. We’ll take one day at a time for as long as we have.

(But hurrah for celebrations!)

Pomp, circumstance, and soggy scrapbooks

 This past weekend has been jubilant and celebratory. Our granddaughter Alandra graduated from George Fox University as a mechanical engineer. That is, indeed, an accomplishment. The whole class of 2024 is to be congratulated for their courage and persistence. These young people entered their college experience in the fall of 2020 at the height of the COVID pandemic. What was to have been a long-awaited experience of collegial life—new friendships, classes, all the challenges involved in this phase of life—turned into a marathon of masking, six-feet apart fellowship, hand-sanitizing, and Zoom classes. Not at all what was expected. Rather than collegiality, isolation.

But they persisted and formed bonds that only those passing together through a hard time can experience. And the weekend celebrations were, indeed, jubilant, at time raucous.

We celebrated Alandra. For four days we celebrated: Thursday, Honors Convocation; Friday, Baccalaureate; Saturday, Graduation followed by a family meal; Sunday, reception with family, friends, food, and the sharing of memories. Our dear granddaughter beamed all weekend long. She has passed through one door and entered another, the door to the rest of her life.

Graduation day was drizzly, this being Oregon, but the skies held back during the ceremonies, not actually raining until afterward when people gathered in the Quad to congratulate the new grads. One special moment during the actual ceremony happened as Alandra came forward to accept her degree. The moderator paused to tell the crowd that she was a fifth-generation graduate of George Fox University. (He didn’t supply the details, that her parents graduated from GFU, as did her grandparents (us), her great-grandparents, and her great-great-grandmother. Quite a legacy.)

Alandra doesn’t know what’s ahead. She hasn’t yet applied for a job, and for the summer she is moving back home to live with her parents, a temporary situation she insists. She senses the need for a break, for a time to reflect on where she’s been and to wait on God for an indication of where she’s to go. That seems wise.

For me, last week didn’t begin on such a high note. On Monday morning the director of Resident Services phoned to let me know I needed to get right down to the basement storage units. Each resident has their own cubicle and ours was stuffed. She informed me that a pipe in the ceiling had sprung a leak that had affected a few of the many cubicles. Ours happened to be the most affected. She gave me a number to call in case any of our stuff was ruined and needed to be replaced. That was not a reassuring piece of information. So I hurried down.

Sure enough, wetness reigned. A tarp covered the top of the affected cubicles, funneling the water from the still leaking pipe into a large garbage container. It didn’t pour, but the steady drip drip was not music to my ears.

All our stuff was wet. Fortunately, we had stored most of it in plastic containers and the contents of these stayed dry—winter clothes, Christmas stuff, some documents and memorabilia, etc.) Our suitcases, camping gear, and bicycle pump were wet but not damaged. But I had stored some items in cardboard boxes, never thinking something like this would happen. These items were damaged. They included my high school and college scrapbooks, something I’m sentimental about. Also a shoebox of love letters from Hal from before we were married. Mushy stuff, now literally mushy.

The staff loaned us an empty cubicle where we could store our stuff until the situation was resolved. And I brought the scrapbooks upstairs, pried the pages apart and spread them on the floor, table, and chairs to dry. My soggy memories. I’ll be able to salvage some of it. It will now have an antique, wrinkly look, quite artistic (at least that’s what I’m telling myself).

In the college memories book, I found my graduation program (“The George Fox College Year of Jubilee Graduating Class of 1967”), some photos (sticky), and a newspaper article with me in my regalia looking quite pleased with myself.

I love the coincidence (a coming together—a co-happening—of two separate incidents) of the two graduations—my granddaughter’s and mine. There are differences—for one, 50 graduates at my ceremony and just under 500 at Alandra’s. But the goofy smiles and the sense of accomplishment and celebration—these are universal.

Hurrah for the celebration of landmarks!

Hurrah for the links between the generations!

Hurrah for good memories!

Hurrah for new beginnings!

God is good. Hurrah!